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Thursday, February 05, 2004

I give all liberals a bad name

Two months ago I published an essay about how I dealt with a disruptive conservative student in one of my undergraduate honors seminars. This week, The Chronicle of Higher Education ran three letters in response to my essay. Two of them, I was pleased to see, were beautifully self-undermining. But one of them held my attention.  Before you read it, keep in mind that (a) I gave this conservative student an A for the course, (b) I repeatedly prevented other students from ganging up on him, and (c) I explicitly described him like so: “He was forceful, intelligent, and articulate. Sometimes he was witty, and he was always knowledgeable about cyberpunk and postmodern science fiction. Often, however, he was obstreperous and out of bounds.” OK, now here’s the letter:

To the Editor:

Although I, too, consider myself a liberal, I was dismayed by Michael Bérubé’s essay. Rather than debunking the argument that university campuses are biased against conservative students, Bérubé actually lends credibility to this notion.

Unfortunately, Bérubé assumes a self-righteous, holier-than-thou persona that grates on people’s nerves and gives all liberals a bad name. He characterizes himself as the patient, long-suffering professor forced to make “reasonable accommodations for students whose standards of ‘reasonableness’ are significantly different” from his. ... In striking contrast, anyone who disagrees with Bérubé is characterized far less charitably.  Accuracy in Academia is a “slightly nutty group.” David Horowitz is “exaggerating hysterically.” Stanley Kurtz’s position is “paranoid.” ...

Which brings me to “John,” described as “a large white student,” who made the semester so uncomfortable for everyone in the class. Bérubé makes “John” sound like a difficult student. Very likely he was. Yet I have to wonder whether a student who behaved the same way but reinforced the professor’s beliefs would also have been considered “out of bounds.” Moreover, would this article have been possible if it had been based on a conservative student who was not so outspoken? Are all conservatives exaggerating, hysterical, paranoid, and obstreperous? This is what the article seems to imply. . .

Dana Zimbleman
Assistant Professor of English
Jefferson College
Hillsboro, Mo.

Let me paraphrase this letter, if I may-- I received about 50 or 60 just like it back in December, and all of them accused me of vilifying “anyone who disagrees with me”:

I consider myself a liberal, but honestly, I’m far more concerned that Michael Bérubé said that David Horowitz was “exaggerating hysterically” than that Bérubé’s student interrupted his class in order to defend the Japanese-American internment camps created during World War II. When Bérubé’s student said that the internments were justified, yes, Bérubé treated him with respect while disagreeing with him and trying to bring the class discussion back to the novel at hand. But when Bérubé calls Horowitz “hysterical,” I fear that he calls into question the very standards of reason he is invoking!  Indeed, he is giving all liberals a bad name!  I have to think that if the student were a different kind of student, this article would have been very different as well!

My reply to this kind of disingenuousness is basically . . . how shall I put this? --grow up. As for Hysterical Horowitz, I was talking about Horowitz’s claim that “99 percent of all commencement speakers are Democrats, liberals, or Greens.” That claim is right on the bottom of this page of Horowitz’s FrontPage online magazine, and it’s based on his Center for the Study of Popular Culture’s “study” of 32 campuses (there are 3500 colleges in the United States). The campuses chosen by the CSPC are places like Amherst, Berkeley, Brown, Oberlin, Smith, Wellesley, and Wesleyan; and David’s list of “liberals” includes (I am not making this up) Cokie Roberts, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Ted Koppel, Claire Shipman, Judy Woodruff, and Thomas Friedman, whereas speakers like Helmut Kohl are listed as “neutral.” If I say that this list represents a wingnut’s view of the world, am I being unfair?  (Also see David’s “executive summary,” entitled “One Last, Leftist Lecture”-- yes, that’s right, leftist indoctrination at the hands of Katie Couric and Anna Quindlen, in a commencement address, no less.) Seriously, this is kind of stuff you see from people who go around complaining that cookbooks are full of liberal bias because they so often say “season liberally” instead of “season conservatively” or “use a liberal dash of salt” instead of “hoard your salt conservatively, as Hayek advises.”

Really, people, if “99 percent of all commencement speakers are Democrats, liberals or Greens” is not an hysterical exaggeration, the phrase has no meaning.

But more important, over the past two months I’ve come to realize that something very funny is going on here.  Either (this is option A) there are some conservatives out there who sincerely have no idea how nutty and vile some of their number really are (don’t worry, I have an example coming right up), or (this would be option B) there’s actually something like a coordinated two-step program at work, whereby nutty and/or vile far-right wingnuts say X, and then people like me call them on it, and then right behind the wingnuts come these sober voices of reason tsk-tsking that anyone would call conservatives “nutty” and “vile,” and wondering whether this out-of-control leftist anger is going to tear apart the country.

For example.  Over at the National Review Online, John Derbyshire has come up with a fun new game, making up lists of “dead villains” he and his readers would like to exhume and hang.  You know, digging up dead bodies and hanging them-- “gibbeting a corpse,” they call it, as was done with Oliver Cromwell some years ago.  Hey kids, it’s not a foul, ghoulish, neo-medieval exercise, it’s the hip new conservative meme!

And guess who these people are joking about?  Leading the nominations are are Lyndon Johnson, Edward Said, Walter Duranty, Pierre Trudeau, and Margaret Mead.  No, I am not making this up, either.  Derbyshire also reproduces one reader’s list that includes a number of former Supreme Court justices, including Thurgood Marshall, although he doesn’t say whether his reader would like to burn and castrate the corpse of Marshall as well as hanging him (fie on this McCarthyite “political correctness” that doesn’t permit us to speak openly of lynching dead Negroes!)

OK, so I’ll take the bait, as I’ve taken it before: yes, Reed Irvine, the founder of Accuracy in Academia, is indeed slightly nutty.  David Horowitz’s claim about commencement speakers is indeed an hysterical exaggeration.  Stanley Kurtz’s testimony to Congress last summer, in which he claimed that Title VI area-studies programs are dominated by the work of Edward Said, does indeed rely on a paranoid logic.  And, last but not least, John Derbyshire’s little gibbeting-fantasy is completely @#%&ing deranged.  I hope I’m not giving all liberals a bad name in saying that Derbyshire is completely @#%&ing deranged, because I think it’s pretty obvious that Derbyshire is completely @#%&ing deranged.

Now I’ll get another fifty or sixty letters about how I claim to uphold “standards of reason” but I have a terrible habit of slandering and denigrating anyone who disagrees with me.  Bring ‘em on, folks.  Also, don’t forget to claim that I have suggested that all conservatives are mentally ill!

Posted by Michael on 02/05 at 03:57 PM
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Tuesday, February 03, 2004

Thanks, Joe!  Dennis and Al, over to you

Lieberman did the right thing, and he did it mostly-gracefully . . . vowing to support the eventual nominee (good), and implying that he’s the only “mainstream” candidate in the race (not good).  But I come to praise, not to bury.  Let’s hope the Reverend and the Bachelor were watching and taking notes!  Really, guys.  Here’s what’s up next:  Washington and Michigan on Saturday, Maine on Sunday (what’s that about?), then Tennessee and Virginia on the 10th.  You know, I’m just not seeing any Kucinich states or Sharpton strongholds here.  Yes, yes, I know, you’re “message” candidates.  But you want to send a message at this point, I have to think you’d be better off getting a blog.

Back in the real race, the real question is, how much of a run does Edwards make in the next two weeks?  And then if he can hold on through the Wisconsin-Utah Lull in the second half of February, and manage a strong showing on March 2, he may very well run the Florida-Mississippi-Louisiana-Texas table on March 9.  Who knows?  Maybe Edwards himself is thinking the very same thing. . . .

Posted by Michael on 02/03 at 03:52 PM
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For a full and complete investigation

I will not rest until I find out precisely who was responsible for that Super Bowl halftime show, what they knew, and when they knew it.  A tip of the hat to FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who has pledged to pursue this matter to the uttermost.  As a man, and as an American, I can say that there is nothing that so disturbs and repels me, in the course of watching a televised contest of foot-balling, as the sight of a woman’s naked bosom.  Soldier on, Chairman Powell.  Let the truth be known, though the heavens fall.

In other news, I am alarmed beyond measure to learn that our nation’s intelligence agencies may have connived to lead us into an ill-advised war.  Apparently the blog-o-world is all a-flutter at recent revelations that the Central Intelligence Agency, for reasons unbeknownst to ordinary citizens like myself, deliberately led our good President and Vice-President to believe that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to our safety.  Fie, fie on the rascals!  To what levels of depravity will they not sink?  Picture if you will our elected officials, entrusted as they are with protecting our homes and families, on the day they are “briefed” by these dastardly warmongers:

Dastardly warmongering CIA official: So you see, Mr. President, there is no question that Saddam Hussein possesses vast stores of weapons of mass destruction, and has no compunction whatsoever about using them against us at the first opportunity.

The President: I just don’t know-- frankly, this Niger document looks to me like a forgery, and we have no hard evidence of any manufacture of chemical or biological weapons since the last investigations of UNSCOM.  I say we give the inspectors more time.

DWCIA official: I’m afraid that’s not possible, sir.  The storm is threatening.  You saw what he did to those innocent people in Halabja.  Are you willing to take that kind of chance with the people of Houston?

The Vice-President: A chemical attack on Houston!?  Bite your tongue!  Certainly there is no call for that kind of irresponsible talk!  National security is far too important a matter to permit the bandying-about of speculative-- nay, hysterical-- scenarios of apocalypse.

The President: I have to agree.  The question of whether to go to war is the most grave decision I must face as the duly elected representative of the American people, and I insist that we continue to seek other means for adjudicating the many disputes of this troubled region.  Above all, we need to consult with our many allies to determine whether they would join with us in finding alternative means of isolating and containing Saddam.

DWCIA official: Saddam cannot be contained, sir.  There are innumerable trailers and pipes strewn throughout his land, any one of which could help him to rain destruction on us within 45 minutes of his say-so.  And our allies are-- not to put too fine a point on it-- pusillanimous, sir.  There is no strength, no surety to be found in them.

The President: What you say leaves me uneasy in mind.  I must give this matter further thought.

Messrs. Wolfowitz, Feith, and Perle (in unison): Do not judge this matter rashly, sir.  Vice-President Cheney is right-- our dealings with the Arab world after September 11 are very serious business, and we need to proceed with wisdom-- not with the half-baked schemes of rogue elements in our nation’s intelligence apparatus.

Exeunt.

Posted by Michael on 02/03 at 04:01 AM
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Monday, February 02, 2004

World’s championship of foot-balling

I’ll just say this-- I had the point spread right.  Wrong team, way off on the final score (13-10 as opposed to 32-29), but those of us who knew it would be decided by three are a brave and far-seeing group.

The metaphor for the primary is obvious.  Dean opens the game by going 1-for-9 passing and picking up a total of -8 yards in his first six “drives.” Then, after committing a costly turnover that gives Kerry a lead he will maintain for most of the game, Dean will put together two long drives and complete an 85-yard pass just after Kerry has been intercepted in the end zone.  But Kerry pulls it out with his own series of well-executed drives, exposing telling weaknesses in Dean’s secondary and exploiting man-on-man coverage down the sidelines.  And then the game is decided by the kickers, go figure.  Any Democrat who’s wondering how best to run against Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” shell game or the Medicare scam should watch that fourth quarter again.  And do not go for two-point conversions with twelve minutes left, especially if you haven’t made one all season long!

I hope that’s clear.

Posted by Michael on 02/02 at 03:21 AM
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Sunday, February 01, 2004

Quick hits

. . . because I’ve only got two free hours and have to do some real work today.  But I thought it might be worth mentioning that at long last, the WMD have been found.  Huzzah!  Two whole pounds of cyanide, enough to . . . um, enough to . . . well, I don’t know, I’ve never had two pounds of cyanide lying around.  Maybe the AP wire can tell us:

A raid in April found nearly two pounds of a cyanide compound and other chemicals that could create enough poisonous gas to kill everyone inside a space as large as a big-chain bookstore or a small-town civic center.

Authorities also discovered nearly half a million rounds of ammunition, more than 60 pipe bombs, machine guns, silencers and remote-controlled bombs disguised as briefcases, plus pamphlets on how to make chemical weapons, and anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-government books.

OK, so these weapons were found in East Texas, not in Iraq.  So what?  What’s your point-- that Iraq was a better place under Saddam?  Call me a liberal hawk, but I’d support an invasion of Texas right now-- I don’t need any permission slips from Schroeder or Chirac.

That’s thing one.  Thing two:  updating my membership in Brad DeLong’s fan club.  Back on Wednesday he wrote a post that included this:

Why do so many of us who worked so hard on economic policy for the Clinton administration, and who think of ourselves as mostly part of a sane and bipartisan center, find the Bush administration and its Republican congressional lapdogs so… disgusting, loathsome, contemptible? Why are we so bitter?

After introspection, the answer for me at least as clear. We worked very hard for years to repair the damage that Ronald Reagan and company had done to America’s fisc. We strained every nerve and muscle to find politically-possible and popularly-palatable ways to close the deficit, and put us in a position in which we can at least begin to think about the generational long-run problems of financing the retirement of the baby-boom generation and dealing with the rapidly-rising capabilities and costs of medicine. We saw a potential fiscal train wreck far off in the future, and didn’t ignore it, didn’t shrug our shoulders, didn’t assume that it would be someone else’s problem, but rolled up our sleeves and set to work.

Then the Bush people come in. And in two and a half years they trash the place. They trash the place deliberately. They trash the place casually. They trash the place gleefully. They undo our work for no reason at all--just for the hell of it.

I do think there’s a reason for the trashing, and I think Brad DeLong knows very well what it is; it’s right there in Suskind’s The Price of Loyalty, to which DeLong himself has provided such great color commentary in recent weeks.  Think of Cheney saying, in defense of the second round of insane tax cuts, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.  We won the midterm elections, this is our due.” This is our due!  We get more money!  Really, it’s like having a White House run by the degenerate superrich, you know, the kind who think they earned their inherited estates or who go around claiming that their Halliburton wealth had “nothing to do” with government support.  They really believe they’re entitled to rob the rest of us and hoard the proceeds unto the seventh generation-- and don’t just take it from me or from economists like DeLong, take it from one of the nation’s leading analysts of Bush fiscal policy, Ruben Bolling.  Anyway, DeLong has been en fuego all week.  Drop by and ask him to start offering coffee mugs inscribed with the words “disgusting, loathsome, contemptible.”

Last but not least, a friend writes to say that he’s tempted to pick the Panthers, 2-0, in triple overtime-- but then offers a “real” prediction of 24-20.  I say 13-10.  And Edwards in SC, Kerry everywhere else, though Clark comes in a statistical tie (as opposed to a Lieberman tie) for first in OK.

Now back to work.

Posted by Michael on 02/01 at 07:04 AM
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